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Æther: the Progress Report (& Happy Fun Color Time)

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Progress on Aether is still coming along, and why not share what Maarfy and I have developed? No reason, is why. Unfortunately I can't transpose her moveset onto original demo I made in 2019 because a lot of crucial stuff is no longer compatible, and without teleporting around or wall climbing it' be very obnoxious to traverse. In the meantime, please enjoy her moveset through the base game! Even in this limited scope she can pull off some pretty silly stuff, though I recommend playing with rewinds as sometimes things can get a little too silly and she winds up inside of a wall or something. Climbing and swimming also have no particular animation attached to them, so they're just... there.

Aethearly.bps!
Aethearly-v2.bps!
Now with colors made by the nefarious Smwcentral people



Eszett's new moveset makes her old demo feel like she's lugging around a bag of bricks - she can gain considerable speed and height thanks to her Long Leap and High Hop, and even jumping after a Long Leap will allow Eszett to gain considerable distance and air.


Press SELECT to equip the Blasting Bangle, which supercharges her leaps and hops to make her soar. In the real game, it'll even explode like a Bob-omb which can blast open certain areas.


Press SELECT a second time to equip the Blinding Bracer, and then after a running start press 'R' (which will eventually be the general use dodge button) to engage in a Super Sprint. This state will allow you to gain considerable speed and have pin-point control over your momentum. It's tricky, but you don't exit out of the state while in water or climbing, so you can still make dizzying leaps.

It's a little buggy at the moment though, so if you crash into the right side of any object you're liable to die, and also stopping can put Eszett in a weird glitch state. Perils of game design, I guess.


Lastly, you can hold 'X' and press UP to cycle through Eszett's outfits. She has an awful lot in this demo, and I invite everyone to find the references made with them!

I also invite anyone to make an outfit of their own! Open up the hack and:
• Change Eszett's colors as you see fit
• Ctrl+Alt+Left Click to copy the entire palette row
• Paste the results! It would be helpful to post a screenshot of the outfit, as well as add $ before every number to make it easier to copy-paste into the code. I'll try and insert all the ones I like.


If it's more convenient for you, you can also edit this image.

Please enjoy, let me know about any concerns or ideas you have, and have a great C3!


Other Submissions of mine!
I remember you posting this in showoff really loving this and I love how you gave the character many outfit choices they remind me of alternative colors from smash bros.


You are challenged by Champion Daisy!

LAYOUT FOOTER:
bruh those moves are insane

Benny Harvey RIP, miss you big man.

What kind of black magic are you using? O.O
The animations are so smooth and the new moves are really cool
It's nice to see other people creating more involved player characters with custom graphics and move sets and such.

I made my own custom player here.

Click the character on the right side of my layout to visit my Discord server and discuss and play and look at and get updates and sneak peeks of the games and other things I'm making.

The authors of these 2 My Little Pony fan games have removed their games from the Internet.
Rise of the Clockwork Stallions has been updated! Download My Little Pony: Rise of the Clockwork Stallions DX: Director's Cut and My Little Pony: Magic Shards now! Spread this link!

This looks interesting. I like how fluid the animation is
Check out my WIP romhack!
Originally posted by OrangeBronzeDaisy
I remember you posting this in showoff really loving this and I love how you gave the character many outfit choices they remind me of alternative colors from smash bros.

Thank you! Maybe one day Eszett can be in Rivals of Aether with all of her colors intact, because ridiculous color swap variety seems to be par for the course in RoA mods.
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Originally posted by Bench-kun
bruh those moves are insane

I hope that the true insanity can shine some day. The Hyper Sprint allowing you to hover over the surface of water, the Blasting jumps having actual explosive blasts, and all of the other powerup sets that you can choose between.
_____
Originally posted by Idunno
What kind of black magic are you using? O.O
The animations are so smooth and the new moves are really cool

It's the Arcane Arts of whatever it is Maarfy is doing; Can't quite give a smart answer tbh. The animation was tricky to get right, but if you do it for long enough then you have a pretty good 3D sense of things, and it gets easier the more frames you have as a reference.
I'm hoping that I can make an actual 3D model of Eszett to help that process along this year.
_____
Originally posted by DPBOX
It's nice to see other people creating more involved player characters with custom graphics and move sets and such.

Mario World is a weirdly good engine for that, you know? Like, it's hard to make something that escapes the Sonic mold in a Sonic the Hedgehog hack, but Super Mario World feels like you can really make it your own.
____
Originally posted by JupiHornet
This looks interesting. I like how fluid the animation is

Thanks! Almost everything has a frame count that's divisible by 4, which is a marked improvement over generally anything in World. Animations even look quite a bit nicer in-game compared to anything that's isolated as a gif without any screen-scrolling. The moving around helps mask any blemishes, I suppose.
Gotta post my oven-fresh thoughts real quick before I forget them!

- this will probably come as a surprise to you, but those animations are buttery smooth and I'm in awe.
- I will say that with the amount of frames and the detail on each one, some actions (like jumping or falling) feel like a bit of a mess of wiggling pixels rather than animation you can appreciate, at least if you're very used to SMW. I guess things are hard to parse at that speed.
- wow, there are a lot more custom player palettes than I thought! I probably asked before and forgot: is that just a demo thing or will it be an actual feature in the game?
- the physics feel changed but not overly so, which is appreciated. I maintain that SMW's physics are great, but if you're going as far as you have in making your hack feel like an original game, it makes sense to move away from them just a little.
- I assume there's a reason the Y button is the only one that lets you accelerate? I'm more of an "X to run" kind of guy so it took me a second to realize the physics aren't just super slow.
- stars and switches don't seem to run out, but that's probably intentional.
- the new moves are fun! It took me quite a bit to get the timing right on the button presses but I got how they work.
- by far the most fun thing in this demo: kick a shell in the flat part of Yosh1's 1sland 2 and use quick long jumps to catch up with it. I managed it once, and I landed right on the shell and bounced off of it, which felt great!


 
Still wild to me just how outright smooth she is. So much love is going into this, and it shows! Keep it up!
I've made a considerable effort to keep up with a lot of the progress you've made on Eszett's animations in #showoff, but even then it is still spectacular to see it in action. It's so difficult to believe the system is even capable of these, it genuinely puts most other graphic works to shame. Her moveset looks like it'll allow for some really fun levels and new, creative setups. Easily my number one most anticipated project in this community. Major props to both you and Maarfy on the love and care put into this.

e: Forgot to mention how well-designed the character is that nearly every color combination looks great on her! Astounding work as always.
Looking fantastic as always, king. This console rarely ever saw the likes of this level of character animation, even in AAA professional titles.

I really can't gush on this enough, Eszett is a treasure. I really can't wait to play the actual game and see what all I can do with all of these moves. After I wrap up my project, this will be the first thing I try out.
GANYMEDE

Chapter Two: Land of No Shame
I'm really impressed with the animations, for many extra frames and how smooth they look. You and Maarfy deserve a lot of praise for implementation and execution, I can't wait to see how the final product looks!
The name "Æther" immediately rang a bell with me, but I kinda forgot which hack this was - then looking at the GIFs immediately reminded me. It's that hack with the super amzing-looking, smooth animations. One of my favorite hacks from the past couple of C3s. I always found this super impressive, especially since no other SMW Hack has attempted to do this yet. It really sticks out. Almost looks like something that could have released on DSiWare. Like, it reminds me of Shantae in particular. I think it had similarly animated sprites on the DSi.

I definitely won't forget the name again, because few WIP hacks get me as excited as this one. I definitely want to play it!
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg

- I will say that with the amount of frames and the detail on each one, some actions (like jumping or falling) feel like a bit of a mess of wiggling pixels rather than animation you can appreciate, at least if you're very used to SMW. I guess things are hard to parse at that speed.

I think I might feel the same for her rising animation, but the issue might be her hands moving around. That seems to work fine in isolation, but in context it makes her a bit too jittery.
Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg

- wow, there are a lot more custom player palettes than I thought! I probably asked before and forgot: is that just a demo thing or will it be an actual feature in the game?

Multiple outfits will, but accessing them via button combination probably won't be. Having other colors on demand wouldn't be the worst thing, but at the end they'll probably be accessed by a start menu or something.
Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg

- I assume there's a reason the Y button is the only one that lets you accelerate? I'm more of an "X to run" kind of guy so it took me a second to realize the physics aren't just super slow.

'X' will be dedicated to a special Search Stance button, but if people have a preference on 'X' as a 'Y' clone, then maybe that's better suited for 'A'

Search Stance in question - this is only a proof of concept that was made a long time ago, but it probably won't change much.
Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg

- by far the most fun thing in this demo: kick a shell in the flat part of Yosh1's 1sland 2 and use quick long jumps to catch up with it. I managed it once, and I landed right on the shell and bounced off of it, which felt great!

While I'll try to keep things railroaded a little, I'm also hoping that people can take advantage of moves like that to get to where they aren't supposed to be. There's something really fun about those sorts of tricks, and their potential will really shine through when wall climbing and item bagging is reintroduced.
However, there's also going to be upgradable stamina, a la Breath of the Wild, which will make it considerably harder to get to wrong places too early without being veeeery clever.

________

Originally posted by Eevee
Still wild to me just how outright smooth she is. So much love is going into this, and it shows! Keep it up!


Originally posted by Veck
Easily my number one most anticipated project in this community. Major props to both you and Maarfy on the love and care put into this.

e: Forgot to mention how well-designed the character is that nearly every color combination looks great on her! Astounding work as always.


Originally posted by Ondore's Lies
Looking fantastic as always, king. This console rarely ever saw the likes of this level of character animation, even in AAA professional titles.

I really can't gush on this enough, Eszett is a treasure. I really can't wait to play the actual game and see what all I can do with all of these moves. After I wrap up my project, this will be the first thing I try out.

Originally posted by RussianMan
I'm really impressed with the animations, for many extra frames and how smooth they look. You and Maarfy deserve a lot of praise for implementation and execution, I can't wait to see how the final product looks!


Thank you all very much! It was all thanks to Maarfy's talents that encouraged the Devilry of going waaay past the point of practicality with these systems and presentation.

_________

Originally posted by RPG Hacker
I definitely won't forget the name again, because few WIP hacks get me as excited as this one. I definitely want to play it!


Fun fact: I came up with the name "Aether" back when I had much smaller ambitions for the hack because it would naturally come up much sooner than other hacks when organized alphabetically.
Now I can't really imagine a title I'd prefer to have - sometimes a cynical idea has some merit in the long term. In any case, I hope that we can make something that lives up to everyone's lofty expectations!


Other Submissions of mine!
Having fun making palettes for eszett.


Those were posted on the Discord (along with other people's) but I decided to post them here as well for Engagement™.

I tested the build. Movement feels very fluid and satisfying to do so. The momentum that Eszett gets from her long jump is kinda insane and very satisfying to pull off. The "short jump" takes to get used, but feels nice to pull off. Amazing work from both you and Maarfy in bringing such a lively character to a SMW Hack. Can't wait when your hack is fully done. #smrpg{:3}


Mr Scotsman said:
What a lovely wee update to this nice little thing you have going on Leaky, it's nice to see little snippets of it often with this new set of moves making it more quicker to get about and more setups for different levels. I hope this is not to hard to do and I am really hopeful to see more cool updates to this cool hack.

Signed: Jon
Thank you and have a nice day

I really love how this baserom looks and feels! Eszett's animations are so smooth and fluid, and you really know your stuff when it comes to animation. The smear frame when she crouches, for example, which makes her cartoonishly bounce is great!

I wanted to do this much earlier, but here is my contribution to her palette:

$0000,$7FFF,$0481,$4A02,$5B08,$6BEE,$3FD5,$3B8B,$581D,$2529,$300C,$5071,$70D6,$7E10,$7E00,$4701

Feel free to tweak the colours if needed!

I feel that once you have finished this project in the future you must pursue your own actual game with such detailed and fluid sprite animations.

If you showed this to someone and took out the SMW elements like the foreground I'd highly doubt they'd think it was made in SMW.
I'll have to try out how the character controls for some feedback but from others comments they seem to be very well thought out with how they function.

Stunning Work as always! #smrpg{y}

Click here to get the next version of Aethearly with some of the outfits you fine folk designed! But it's not too late for more; I'm always game for more outfits if anyone wants to design some.

___________________

Originally posted by Magi
Having fun making palettes for eszett.

Thanks for the clothes, Magi! It's a surprising amount of fun to make them, though it's fortunate that these community outfits are added on the end of the list. If I want to add or subtract outfits somewhere earlier on the list, I gotta manually rewrite every ".PalXX" on it.
I don't suppose there's a way to help with that on notepad? Or Notepad++, though I'm not quite a wiz on that.
________
Originally posted by Anorakun
I tested the build. Movement feels very fluid and satisfying to do so. The momentum that Eszett gets from her long jump is kinda insane and very satisfying to pull off. The "short jump" takes to get used, but feels nice to pull off. Amazing work from both you and Maarfy in bringing such a lively character to a SMW Hack. Can't wait when your hack is fully done. #smrpg{:3}

The super jump after her Long Leap is maybe a little too insane, and I can see it being toned down sometime in the future. It is something we've spent a good amount of time fine tuning, and while there are still some blemishes it's good that the fun movement can still shine in this really primordial form!
________

Originally posted by Mr Scotsman
What a lovely wee update to this nice little thing you have going on Leaky, it's nice to see little snippets of it often with this new set of moves making it more quicker to get about and more setups for different levels. I hope this is not to hard to do and I am really hopeful to see more cool updates to this cool hack.
Signed: Jon

Anything worth doing's got to be pretty hard to do lad, but it's just one little thing at a time. So long as Maarfy and I are working together, I'm certain we can make something that's worthwhile.
________
Originally posted by bebn legg
I really love how this baserom looks and feels! Eszett's animations are so smooth and fluid, and you really know your stuff when it comes to animation. The smear frame when she crouches, for example, which makes her cartoonishly bounce is great!

I wanted to do this much earlier, but here is my contribution to her palette:
Feel free to tweak the colours if needed!

The ducking went through a few renditions, and the bounciness was added after a lot of people thought something more rigid and realistic was unappealing. Rubberiness in general is something that really helps with making someone move more 'charismatically' so to speak, so when her repertoire expands she'll definitely retain that. And Undeazett! Glorious! It wouldn't be the first zombie outfit, but hey, more the merrier when it comes to ghouls.
___________
Originally posted by 1UPdudes
I feel that once you have finished this project in the future you must pursue your own actual game with such detailed and fluid sprite animations.

If you showed this to someone and took out the SMW elements like the foreground I'd highly doubt they'd think it was made in SMW.
I'll have to try out how the character controls for some feedback but from others comments they seem to be very well thought out with how they function.

I'm kind of hoping that Æther could become a true game some day, and it wouldn't be the first retail project inspired by a rom hack either. As for Eszett, I believe she controls very well but there's some work to be done with her Super Sprint - it's a little too slippery to control even though she stops on a dime, and moving left and right aren't equivalent in acceleration. Otherwise, it's coming along well enough but she really needs her wall climbing and Satchel Slam to even approach what you're truly capable of doing.


Other Submissions of mine!
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